Seed

by Michael Edelson

  “We need some help!” Alex shouted. “We have to get Ryan to Barbara’s operating room.”

  Max motioned to Reynard and Bob, who ran to the side of the boat to assist. Between the two of them and Patrick and Barbara, they easily lowered Ryan out of the boat and carried him off at a brisk pace.

  “What happened to him?” Max asked. “And who is that?” He motioned to Wawa. “You found a survivor?” Alex noticed that many of the others were staring at their mentally defective new friend. Now that there was no one stopping him, Wawa climbed over the side and jumped down onto the sand. He hadn’t soiled himself since Barbara cleaned him, for which Alex was immensely grateful.

  “Ryan got shot,” Alex explained. “And yes, Wawa is a survivor, but he’s got brain damage. I have a lot to tell you, Max, and we should do it somewhere quiet.” It was only then that he realized Max had used the word “survivor.” Was it simply a matter of word choice, or did he know something he wasn’t sharing?

  “We all want to hear it,” the loudmouth said. “We have a right to know.” The crowd announced its assent.

  Alex opened his mouth for an angry retort, but then reconsidered. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s all meet in front of Max’s house in an hour and I’ll tell everyone what we found. It’s um…it’s a lot to take in, so prepare yourselves, okay?”

  Many people in the crowd exchanged nervous glances, and the loudmouth seemed taken aback. He had been expecting a different answer.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said.

  “Good idea,” Max said. “I have some things to tell you too, though, so be there a bit early.”

  “Will do,” Alex said, then turned to Yael. “Can I trouble you to help me police up the gear and get it back in the arms room?”

  “Yes sir,” she said, without a trace of sarcasm. Alex furrowed his brow, not sure how to take that, but decided she was too tired to be toying with him.

  “Sandi,” he said. “Please keep an eye on Wawa. I’ll take your rifle and vest, so you can relax, but he shouldn’t be left alone until Barbara figures out what to do with him, okay?” Max was staring at Wawa and he did not look pleased. Alex supposed he wouldn’t be happy either if he’d sent a team out and the only survivor they brought back was a mental defective.

  Sandi nodded. “Yes sir.”

  Everyone had left their rifles in the boat, so that part was easy. He took three others besides his own, leaving the rest for Yael, and they set off to the arms room.

  “You were great out there,” he said to her. “If you’re up for it, I’d like to make our relationship official.” He smiled in anticipation, as he knew his particular choice of words would throw her.

  “What?” she asked, just as confused as he had expected. “What exactly are you proposing? What relationship?”

  He chuckled. “Relax, killer, I’m talking about our professional relationship. A good captain needs a good lieutenant. I can give you a field commission, if you’re interested.”

  “Oh, that. I guess, but I just can’t think about that right now. I mean there’s so much…the city…”

  “No, I get it,” he said. “I should have waited to ask you. I get distracted too easily, there’s a lot we all need to think about.”

  They got the rifles back in the armory and Alex decided it would be okay to wait until later to get the rest of the gear. He dumped his pack and the few chest rigs he had with him on the floor and set the rifles on a metal table towards the back of the room next to a cabinet full of solvents and other cleaning supplies. Those parts of the weapons susceptible to corrosion were treated with high tech coatings, so the cleaning could also wait.

  “I’ll see you later then,” Yael said once he was back out in the hallway. “If you’re done with me.”

  “Not by a long shot,” he said, and just before she could protest he added, “But yeah, go ahead. I’ll meet you by Max’s in a little bit.”

  They left the warehouse together, but then Alex veered off towards his own cabin. Just as he was about to pass out of sight, he looked back and caught her staring at him. Turning away, he smiled and resumed his walk.

  The sight of his cabin made him strangely happy, and when he was inside, he sighed contentedly and collapsed into his chair. He popped open his laptop just like he used to do in his barracks, and before that his dorm, and before that his room in his parents’ house. This was home, he realized, for better or worse. When the screen lit up, he decided that there was nothing he wanted to do with the computer, he had just turned it on out of habit. It wasn’t like he could surf the internet.

  He looked at his bed with genuine longing, but settled for a quick meal and some water, then forced himself out of his chair and back outside. He wasn’t sure how much time he had, but he wanted to check out that strange pole on the beach before going over to Max’s.

  People stared at him as he walked, but he ignored them, as usual, though this time with a slight grin on his face. Despite everything that had happened, he was happy here, and it felt good to be back. Memories of Honolulu and the implications of what they had seen there loomed ominously over him, but he pushed them away. Once he fully processed everything, maybe he’d feel differently. But for now, for this short moment in time, things were okay.

  When he got to the beach he turned towards the patch of jungle to his right, pausing only to admire a pretty girl in Goth getup—pale skin, black hair, black lipstick, long skirt and leather tank top, also black.

  “Hello,” he muttered, though she was too far away to hear him. “Where have you been hiding?” He wondered how Yael would look in Goth clothing, and decided he would have to find out one day soon.

  Passing through the patch of jungle, he was so shocked at what he saw that he drew his pistol before he knew what he was doing.

  Just ahead, about where he had grabbed the dog after crawling half way through the barrier, someone had mounted a wooden pole in the sand. Tied to the pole was a man, obviously dead for some time. Dried blood and vomit covered him from chin to groin and spread out in a small circle around him.

  Whatever feelings of relief at his homecoming he had harbored were gone, and Alex was hit with a sudden and sickening realization: the man had been executed. Using the barrier.

  Chapter 17

  He found Max in his oversized cabin, sitting at his desk—which was setup so that he would face the entrance like in some kind of damned office. Bob and Reynard weren’t around, but some other guy he didn’t know tried to stop him at the door. Alex ignored him and marched in.

  He glared at Max, but didn’t say anything. He told himself, again, that he didn’t know the details of what had happened, and acting on assumptions was what stupid people did.

  “This is about the man on the beach,” Max said, not the least bit flustered.

  “Sorry, governor,” the man by the door said. “I tried to…”

  “That’s okay, Kristoff, Alex can come in whenever he wants to. Close the door please.”

  “Sure thing,” Kristoff said, sounding confused. Alex heard the door click behind him.

  “Something terrible happened while you were gone,” Max said with a dramatic sigh as he leaned back in his chair. “Do you know Michelle?”

  Alex shook his head. “I don’t know most of the people in the colony.”

  “Lovely young woman,” Max said, with clear regret. “The man you saw tied to the pole, he raped her. Beat her badly also. I’ve already let Barbara know, and she will examine her when she is done with your man.”

  Alex was taken aback. “Raped?” he asked stupidly. His anger was replaced by confusion.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. He forced his way into her cabin, beat her, raped and sodomized her.” Max pursed his lips in distaste. “He didn’t even deny it, acted like he had done nothing wrong.”

  “So you…” Alex was horrified by the images Max’s story conjured, but killing a man? With the barrier? What right did he have?

  “We tried him, of course,” Max continued
. “As I said, he didn’t deny the charges and made a mockery of the proceedings.” Max’s expression changed, and though Alex couldn’t read it, he knew he didn’t like it. “But he changed his tune very quickly when I pronounced sentence.” Max seemed self satisfied, smug even.

  “You executed him with the barrier,” Alex said, aware that he was stating the obvious. He needed to say it out loud, it was important to do so for some reason he couldn’t understand.

  “Yes, I did. Would you not have done the same?”

  “I don’t know,” Alex admitted. “I guess I don’t understand what gives us the authority to do things like that. I told my guys I’d shoot them if they disobeyed orders, but…” He wasn’t sure why he was telling Max this. He wasn’t sure of a lot things, it seemed.

  “I applaud the fact that you would ask such a question, but that answer will be apparent to you soon enough. It’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Oh?” He didn’t want to gloss over the execution, but he didn’t know what else to say. If the rapist hadn’t denied guilt, and if everything else Max said was true, hadn’t Max done the right thing? Wouldn’t Alex himself have just shot the bastard in the head? That was the thing though. Was Max telling the truth? He would have to ask around and find out.

  “I received a transmission yesterday afternoon. It contained a list of instructions and a video. I watched the video, but I haven’t shown it to anyone else. I wanted to wait until you returned.”

  “A video? What was on it?”

  “A presidential address,” Max said.

  “A what?” Alex’s mouth fell open. “A presidential address? What president? Of the United States?”

  “It’s the former vice president,” Max explained. “And yes, of the United States.” He raised his hands, fending off the barrage of questions Alex was about to unleash. “You’ll just have to watch it. Do you want to do it now, or with everyone else? I plan to play it for everyone after you give your report.”

  Alex thought it over. “I guess I’ll watch it with everyone. You already know what I’m going to tell you, don’t you?”

  “Not the details, but yes,” Max admitted. “It was all part of the address.”

  “You mean,” Alex asked. “It tells us what…what we’re doing here? What happened to the rest of the world?” Surely it wasn’t going to be so easy? All the answers conveniently packaged in a single video?

  Max nodded. “Yes it does, and it changes everything.” Alex wondered what he meant by that, and then remembered that the guy at the door, Kristoff, had addressed Max as “governor.” Back at the beach when Alex had thwarted the vote, Max had referred to himself as a temporary leader.

  Alex took a step back and grabbed a dresser near the door. “Fuck.”

  “Shall we go outside now?” Max asked, motioning towards his monitor. “Looks like almost everyone is here.” So he did have at least some cameras in the facility after all.

  “Yeah,” Alex said weakly.

  The sun was in Alex’s face as he stepped through the door, and he held up his hand to shield his eyes. People were still arriving, but the crowd gathered in the small clearing in front of Max’s house was the biggest he’d seen since waking up in this place. It felt good to see so many people after the desolation of Honolulu, but also strange, as though it wasn’t normal for so many living human beings to be in one place. Perhaps it wasn’t normal anymore.

  They waited a few minutes for the stragglers to come in. Yael was one of the last to arrive, and she brought the little dog with her. Barbara wasn’t there, and of course neither was Ryan.

  “If everyone is ready,” Max said. “There are a lot of important things we have to tell you, and something to show you. Alex will begin. Alex?”

  “Just outside the facility,” Alex began without ceremony. “Are a bunch of ruined buildings…collapsed houses, piles of rubble, that sort of thing. No sign of people, though there are roads and a park and power lines, or at least poles.”

  He continued, telling them about how they found the boat and took it to Oahu, and what they found there. He looked into their faces as he talked and saw a mix of disbelief, shock and a steadily growing terror. Until a moment ago, most of these people had probably thought that there were lives for them to go back to. Alex didn’t know how far the destruction spread, but he held on to no illusions that there was any part of home to which any of them could return.

  “What the hell do you mean, gone?” the long haired loudmouth demanded. “A city can’t just disappear!”

  “I don’t know,” Alex said. “It was just gone. There was some debris, a lot of garbage and holes in the ground where the foundations used to be. I haven’t the slightest fucking idea what could have done that, only that it happened.”

  “How do we know you’re telling the truth?” the loudmouth continued. “What if you’re lying to get us to stay here?”

  Alex almost laughed, but all that came out was a derisive snort. “You think I’m lying? Go! Go out there and see for yourself! No one’s going to stop you. Now do you want to hear the rest or are you going to run your god damned mouth all day?”

  The man glared at him fiercely, but didn’t say anything.

  “There were survivors,” Alex said. “The retarded man we brought back was one of them. The other…” He felt the pain of her death as though it had just happened. Her face was clear in his mind’s eye, and it was not contorted in a snarl. There were no bloody teeth seeking flesh. She looked sad, pleading. Perhaps asking him to spare her, to give her a chance.

  He continued his story, up to the part about the attack in the jungle.

  “So there are survivors,” someone said. “Normal ones I mean.”

  “There were,” the loudmouth muttered. “Before Captain America over here shot them.”

  “Why don’t you just shut up?” someone from the crowd said to the loudmouth, and there were several assents.

  “That’s all I have to say,” Alex said, biting back harsh words. He looked at Max and motioned for him to take over.

  “Thank you, Alex,” Max said in a booming voice. “You and your team did a very brave and necessary thing. It is your expedition that will allow us to properly evaluate what I am about to share. I received a transmission a little while ago. An address from the current president of the United States. An address to us.”

  The gathered crowd erupted in a mix of gasps and outcries demanding an explanation. Max raised his hands, calling for calm. “Please, please, settle down. There will be plenty of time for questions after we watch it.”

  Max turned to the wall of his cabin and pushed something near the door. A panel slid open, revealing a smooth gray surface about fifty inches wide and thirty inches tall. Judging by its aspect ratio, it was some sort of video monitor. Max pushed another button, and an image appeared. It was the seal of the president of the United States.

  Immediately the crowd fell silent, waiting. Alex moved to the back and found Yael. The dog reared up onto his legs, and he gave it an absent minded pat on the head.

  “What is this?” Yael whispered. “Is it really…”

  “I think so,” Alex said. “I haven’t seen it yet. I didn’t want to watch it without you.”

  The display changed to show a man Alex immediately recognized, the former vice president. He was sitting at a desk in front of a draped window. Behind him was an American flag and framed photos, presumably of his family. It looked so normal that it bordered on absurdity.

  “My fellow Americans,” the new president began. “It is with the greatest sadness and weight of responsibility that I address you in this time of unprecedented crisis. You have many questions, and I will humbly try to give you answers, but I must first warn you that what you are about to hear will not be easy, not for me to say, and not for you to accept.”

  Alex felt Yael’s hand on his and turned it so that she could grip it.

  “Approximately two weeks ago, without warning or provocation, in an act
of historically unprecedented cowardice and evil, the People’s Republic of China unleashed a weapon upon the world, a weapon so devastating, so destructive, that it could not have been imagined by sane men.”

  Yael’s hand tightened on his.

  “The destruction was almost total, the loss of lives measured in the billions. It was an act of savagery the likes of which the world has never seen…”

  Alex tuned out the words, though he could no more keep the message from reaching him than he could keep the sun from warming the back of his neck.

  “Oh my god,” Yael said, her voice shaky, lips pressed flat, eyes tearing. “It wasn’t just Honolulu. Oh my god.”

  He reached out to her, and she grabbed his shirt, her fingers clenching so tightly that he felt the fabric constrict his neck. It wasn’t just Honolulu. The town he grew up in now lay in ruins, holes where his home once stood, the streets where he had played as a child now covered in garbage and bloody clothing. The mall where he had kissed a girl for the first time, gone. The old mountainside resort where he had told his then girlfriend Megan he was leaving for military service, now nothing but rubble. Megan herself was an empty dress flapping in the wind. Or perhaps a raving lunatic, shitting in her pants while munching on the faces of what few people were left with wits intact, waiting for someone to come and cave in her skull.

  “…retaliate by conventional means using our strategic defenses, including but not limited to our nuclear arsenal…”

  “Oh my god,” Yael repeated, her voice a high pitched whine. All around them, people were holding each other, crying. Some were shouting, cursing. It was too much for Alex, he felt numb, as though he were watching from afar, a detached observer engrossed in a television drama. He saw the gathered colonists, but also the ruins of the hospital where Haag was treated, the parking lot where Campbell used to park his beat up old Lexus. He saw the sands of the Mojave sweep across the remains of Fort Irwin.